What a Honeycrisp Apple Knows About Leadership

Part One: Start with the Soil

A Honeycrisp apple looks simple enough.

Red skin. A little green. That unmistakable crack when you bite into it. Sweet, but not too sweet.

Then I began reading about what it takes to grow one.

The apple may be crisp.

The process is anything but.

Honeycrisp became enormously popular after its release by the University of Minnesota in 1991. People loved eating it.

Growers had a more complicated relationship with it.

The trees can be temperamental. The fruit does not always ripen evenly. Water and nutrients must be managed carefully. The apples are susceptible to bitter pit, sunburn, soft scald, soggy breakdown, and other disorders—some of which remain hidden until after harvest.

As I read, I found myself smiling.

After more than forty years of working with leaders and organizations, I recognized the problem.

We admire the fruit.

We underestimate the orchard.

The work begins before planting

A thoughtful orchardist does not begin by ordering trees.

The work starts with the land.

Is the soil deep enough? Will water move through it, or collect around the roots? Where does cold air settle? What has grown here before? What may be living beneath the surface?

Penn State recommends beginning orchard preparation two or three years before planting. One piece of guidance caught my attention: good internal drainage may be more important than soil fertility.

What the soil can release may matter as much as what we add to it.

I have seen organizations pour enormous energy into leadership development. New programs. New assessments. New competencies.

Some of it is very good.

But if people cannot tell the truth, if mistakes are remembered longer than lessons, or if stated values bear little resemblance to daily experience, another workshop will not repair the soil.

Water is necessary for a tree.

Water that cannot drain eventually suffocates it.

Organizations have their own drainage problems. Fear settles into low places. Conflict remains unresolved. People learn which subjects are safe and which are better left alone.

For a while, the tree may still look healthy.

The roots know better.

A struggling leader is not always a struggling person. Sometimes we have placed a good person in poor soil and then asked why growth has slowed.

That is an uncomfortable possibility.

It is also a hopeful one, because soil can be tended.

The tree does not grow alone

Most commercial apple trees are grafted. The Honeycrisp portion is joined to a rootstock selected for the soil, climate, desired tree size, disease resistance, and growing system.

The apple may carry the Honeycrisp name.

It does not grow alone.

Neither does a leader.

A person may bring intelligence, courage, imagination, empathy, and experience to a role. But those qualities still need support beneath them.

Does responsibility come with enough authority to act? Can the person get honest information? Is there someone nearby who will tell the truth without trying to score a point? Are the organization’s systems helping the leader—or quietly working against the work?

We tend to speak of leadership as a personal possession. Someone either “has it” or does not.

Character and judgment certainly matter. But leadership is also relational and environmental. The same person can flourish in one setting and wither in another.

Before reaching a conclusion about the tree, it may be worth looking below the graft line.

More is not always nourishment

One of Honeycrisp’s most persistent problems is bitter pit. The disorder is connected to calcium, but the problem is more complicated than adding calcium to the orchard.

The developing fruit must be able to receive it. Nutrient imbalances and excessive shoot growth can draw resources away from the apples.

The orchard can contain what the fruit needs and still fail to deliver it.

That sentence stayed with me.

Organizations can be full of leadership resources and still fail to nourish leaders.

The course exists. The coach is available. The values are printed. The senior team says its door is open.

But does what the person needs actually reach them when it can still make a difference?

I have watched feedback arrive six months too late and still be called development. I have watched responsibility handed down while authority remained firmly at the top. I have watched talented people receive one “growth opportunity” after another until growth became another word for exhaustion.

More is not always nourishment.

Sometimes it is simply more.

The work of the grower

The longer I studied Honeycrisp, the less interested I became in the apple itself.

I became interested in the grower.

The grower cannot command the tree to produce exceptional fruit. There is no speech persuasive enough to make an apple ripen. No workshop can be installed in the branches.

The grower can prepare the soil.

Choose the rootstock.

Notice what the tree is saying.

And return tomorrow.

That is much closer to the work of cultivating leadership than many of the models I have encountered.

We cannot force wisdom into another person. We can create conditions in which wisdom has a chance to grow.

And perhaps we can become a little slower to blame the tree.

When leadership is struggling in your organization, where do you look first?

At the fruit?

At the tree?

Or at the soil you have asked it to grow in?

This is the first essay in a series about Honeycrisp apples and the patient work of cultivating leadership.

Research for this essay drew on the University of Minnesota’s Honeycrisp history, Penn State’s orchard-planning guidance, University of Minnesota guidance on rootstocks, and Penn State’s Honeycrisp research.

Michael T. Neiss is the founder of The Wisdom Orchard — where healthy leaders grow healthy organizations.